


You will never know

by Rospergs



Series: Whatever is left (It's more you than me) [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Child Abuse, Multi, Soulmates, Tony Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-03-19
Packaged: 2018-03-18 14:22:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3572882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rospergs/pseuds/Rospergs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your soulmate is the one the Universe creates for your, the person who holds the other half of your soul. You can't be whole until you are with them, and those with more than a mark are a disgrace, people so greedy the need more than one soulmate.</p><p>Tony Stark has five marks. It's not like anyone knows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You will never know

There are two marks in his body when he is born, and Howard refuses to hold him.

Everything after that is downhill, that is what Tony would tell anyone who asked. If anyone asked, that's it. If they knew that there's something to ask.

He's three when he learns why he doesn't get presents like all those kids from the movies on Christmas, or on his birthday. Howard makes very clear that he isn't going to spoil him when he was born already so greedy. He is his father, and he will make sure to show him how the world actually works. For a couple of weeks after that Tony has another mark around his wrist, and he thinks that maybe the black, golden or gray marks tell you there is somebody out there who will love you, but the purple, yellow and green ones teach you how to hate. By the time he is fourteen and going to MIT, he knows it's such a universal true as the soulmates marks.

One of his marks is greyish, a paler spot than his own skin down his back, and it's just traces, soft and blurred, without any meaning he can gather. He spends hours looking at himself in the bathroom mirror, standing over a little scale until his neck hurts from looking above his shoulder. He draws it again and again on the floor with his finger, where Howard never will find it, trying to understand. But nothing comes out of it.

The other one is even paler, almost scar white, and Tony hates it the most because it's in his forearm. He doesn't know how many times he stayed inside the dark mansion in summer instead to go and play outside, under the sun, because he didn't want to risk a heat stroke. It happened, once or twice, before learning that it isn't really a good idea to run around with a sweater in summer, but the only time he tried to roll up at least his sleeves Jarvis had to go with him to the hospital. By the time the cast comes off, his own skin is so pale that he has to squint to see it, and even so he is not sure he would see it if he didn't know already how does it look, close to a coin so scratched the impression is invisible.

He gets send to a boarding school, and Tony is pretty sure it's his father's way of telling him that even a family, broken as his is, is more than he deserves. Saying that it's hard for him it's a way of putting it. He is seven years old and too reserved, too shy to actually mingle. The older boys call him names and burn his books, call him a freak. But he doesn't have to share his bedroom as the others boys do, the money of Howard protecting him from anyone seeing his marks. It helps a little. At least no one hears him suffocating his screams against the pillow when the nightmares are too much, when the blue creaks around him and there is people cutting his skin open.

Sometimes the dreams are better. Sometimes he dreams with people patting his back, hugging him. He dreams with a huge feast and loud laughs, but he knows they don't laugh at him but with him.

It's there, in the boarding school, where he discovers the third mark. He is tired, in dire need of sleep after an awful week and falling of his feet while he brushes his teeth in the bathroom. He closes his eyes for a second and when he opens them again, alarmed at hearing something fall (his toothbrush, he let it fall) he has his forehead pressed against the mirror. He almost laugh at it when he sees something strange in his right eye. Tony blinks, tries to go closer to the mirror, tilts his head upwards so there's more light... and there, in the iris, is something that resembles almost a spiral in gold. It's tiny, but with the right light it almost glitters, reflecting it.

Tony panics.

He spends the next three weeks until Christmas holiday squinting so no one else notices. When he comes back to home for the holidays Jarvis sees him with his eyes always almost closed, looking downwards every time Howard or Maria enters the same room as him. Jarvis hugs him, he tells him there's nothing wrong with him, and Tony breaks down crying. Because if Jarvis knows, that means that the mark isn't new. It was already there. Tony is actually a freak.

He learns very fast that the third mark is invisible except if you let anyone very close to you. Tony spends the next thirty five years kissing with both eyes closed and having sex in the darkness.

When the fourth mark appears a year later he just calls Jarvis and the next day he receives a packet with make-up. He covers religiously every one of the marks in his skin, including the brown mark of lips on his hipbone. It's in part so no one can ever see them and put two and two together, not even Howard, but he does it so he can breath too. He's eight years old and he can't breath if he catch a glimpse of them, his eyes burning with tears.

Something else happens along the fourth mark. One day everything is fine, or as fine as things are for him, and the next he doesn't understand people and somebody's soul has kissed his hipbone, as the urban legend goes. It just happens.

Suddenly people smiles at him and he can't tell if it's sincere or not. One of his teacher praises him about one his projects, and even when Tony knows that the teachers always look proud of themselves when they praise him, even when his mind knows it, he can't read their expressions. It's like a mask. Turns out his own expressions feel distant too. It takes him two beatings from Howard to be able to start noticing again when it's a good moment to hide, and years of practice to put a mask of his own so others can read whatever he wants to express.

He's ten years old when the fifth and last mark appears on his tight, a storm cloud in broad and black strokes. Tony looks at it, follows it with his fingers and desists. It's obvious that there's no one for him out there. No one will ever accept him with so many marks, no when they would have to share him with so many people. He doesn't even tell Jarvis, just covers it too with concealer. Three days later he burns his hand in the fireplace, grabbing something that he knows is too close to the fire, but he can't manage to care.

When Jarvis asks him why would he do something like that, Tony doesn't lie. He knew he would burn himself, it just... didn't look important. Jarvis stops bandaging his hand, looks at him with tired eyes and says “You must be careful, Tony. You have already too little pieces of your soul left. You have to look out for what is still there.”

Years come and go, and there aren't more marks. Tony doesn't know if laugh or cry. It isn't like it matters anymore, he's broken already. He goes at MIT at the age of fourteen, and have a solid whore reputation at sixteen. Why not, he wonders. His soul is fucking easy as it is, why shouldn't his body be it too. He creates a fake industrial skin as a side project, and his bed partners just multiply from there. Some of the people who gives him drinks at the parties pat his back and tell him that's an intelligent move, to cover up his mark as that and not let anyone know about it. Tony laughs, drinks and laughs again. Yes. Intelligent.

When he knows Rhodey he wish their marks would coincide. He wish he would have that beautiful tone of gold in his palm, depicting a laurel branch. Even if it was his sixth mark – he could cover the others, refuse them all and have somebody at his side forever. Somebody would keep hugging him and petting his hair through the hangovers after it stopped being convenient for them. His parents and Jarvis die (now no one knows he is a freak, he thinks hysterical when he gets the news) and Rhodey proves him how stupid he is sometimes. They finish MIT, Rhodey goes to the Army and yet he's still there when Tony needs him, always willing to suffer one of his calls at three in the morning.

It isn't love, but Tony thinks that maybe he lost the part of his soul which could love along the one that understands people and the other which is all about taking care of himself. This is the better next he can have, almost like a brother.

After the funeral, Obadiah tries to make him tell what is mark his. Tony doesn't, but at the end Obadiah notices the golden dot in his eye, smiles and pats his cheeks, tells him it's safe with him. Next day Tony receives five sunglasses as a gift. He forces himself to look grateful.

When Miss Potts enters his life, a life where he is known as somebody who despises soulmates (because who else would sleep around so much knowing there is somebody waiting for you) or without one (and Tony laughs when he reads that. He laughs so much. He refuses to accept that maybe they were sobs, after all. It doesn't matter, the alcohol makes it difficult to remember any way), he wishes again for a mark that isn't one of his own. But it's alright, because he recognizes that little brown beta on her clavicle. Tony sends her to chose a car for herself of the motor pool and smiles when, twenty minutes later, Happy calls asking for some free time next week. Soulmates were never meant for him, but he's happy for... well, Happy. And for Miss Potts, that insists he calls her Pepper when she comes back a week later. They hit it off from there.

Things happens, Afghanistan happens, and Tony has never been more proud of the fake skin he made when he was a teenager. He needs some help from Yinsen to hide it from their captors, but it endures. Yinsen knows, of course. He saw the kiss mark on his hip and the one of his back while he was taking care of Tony's wounds, and it wasn't difficult to guess that there were more. It's Yinsen who tells him that there are stories, really old stories, which say that those that have more than one soulmate sometimes dream with them, dream their lives, their fears, their present. The story says it's because there's little of your own soul left and a bigger part of the others. His eyes look wise when he tells Tony that maybe he doesn't have nothing yet, but he must be bursting with the souls of his called ones.

Tony laughs, broken and hoarse, and refuses to accept it even when a chill makes him shudder, thinking about battles and feasts, red pooling on the ground, the touch of feathers on his fingers and sharp pain on his back, the fear and the anger and the screams and that damn blue, that blue that just creaks and makes everything go numb.

Those poor bastards, suffering so much and condemned to have him as a soulmate.

He's strangely proud when, after the paladium issue, he gets to read the file Natalia-my-real-name-isn't-Natalia wrote about him and it mentions just the golden mark on his eye. Tony one, SHIELD zero.

And then there are gods, and aliens, and Captain America and a fucking huge battle in New York. But it ends, they win and, while Tony is trying to persuade everyone to go and eat something, the Hulk changes into a very naked Bruce Banner.

Tony stares. Agent Barton catcalls. Tony keeps staring. Somewhere at his right Captain Rogers clears his throat and touch his elbow, still under the armor, trying surely to preserve doctor Banner modesty until he can get dressed. Tony babbles something about having to make sure the tower is alright, and the reactor, about Pepper and his armor and take off before anybody can try and stop him.

And while flying he can't stop seeing it. A brown kiss mark over dusty skin.


End file.
